Pr. Guillaume Bourque, Director of Bioinformatics at the McGill University and Génome Québec Innovation Centre, published an article in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology on the retrovirus HERV, a long noncoding RNA required for human embryonic stem cell identity.
The discovery sheds light on the role viruses play in human evolution and could help scientists better understand how to use stem cells in advanced therapies or even how to convert normal cells into stem cells.
Read in National Geographic : “Ancient Virus DNA Gives Stem Cells the Power to Transform”